Saturday, October 27, 2012

We travelled to the Lost valleys of Nar and Phu over the past few weeks (October 2012) to climb Mount Himlung, a 7126 meter (23,379 feet) mountain on the Tibetan border with Nepal. We nearly reached the top, deciding to turn back for the sake of safety. We felt very far from home up there on that day, the wind constantly droning and us quite alone in a big place with minimal gear. Himlung presented an interesting challenge this Autumn 2012. While there were ~4 teams in base camp, none of us had encountered the mountain in these conditions.

Crevasses were bare and lain open, the route not straightforward as in past years on most of the mountain. We ended up needing a lot more rope and manpower for breaking trail to get as high on the mountain as we did. It was 12 pm, and clouds were rolling in that could potentially obscure the entire mountain as it had the two days prior, obstructing our view and the way down. We had to turn back; and